There are a few examples in recent history of weird billboard art that had no corporate sector funding, was interesting, and wasn't trying to hock us crap.

Sadly, though, most apparently non-commercial billboard/poster "art" is both dull and trying to sell us something.. so when I saw these going up, alarm bells immediately began ringing:



Advertising is always about a constant cycle of appropriation.. ripping off ideas, trying to stay "cutting edge" by pretending to be such; pretending to be a "movement" when you're actually something else. Let's look closely at the last photo.



ZERO SUGAR... right. A "movement" that wants zero sugar. Is it just me, or has someone in the agency fucked up and put the "Stage 2" posters up ahead of time?

If you go to the site advertised there, you find - HEY PRESTO AND OH SO FUCKING EDGY - a blog. erm... right.

Moving right along, the blog is full of vapid shit that pretends to be observational comedy but you can't help but get the feeling it's hiding a badge underneath that flannel shirt.

Well, it is.

The site is owned by the Coca Cola company.1

I also seriously suspect it's a corporate CMS hiding underneath that blog facade, because the URLs look utterly wrong for blog software, and I haven't tried posting a comment, but I suspect they're HEAVILY moderated (or just completely made up) -- any blog nerds out there who'd like to confirm or disprove this please do so; I'm avoiding doing in depth web stuff for a few weeks. :)

What's more, as well as PRETENDING to be a blog, PRETENDING to be a movement, and PRETENDING to be "about" something, they have the fucking audacity to tacitly encourage people to "spread the word" by putting up badly-shot photos of their posters (as usual for pricey corporate promotions pasted five hundred at a time over the top of anything local or real) and their fucking stencils!
http://www.thezeromovement.com/default,166,spread_the_word.sm

Perhaps it goes to prove there are no "real" movements anymore. Perhaps it's making a statement about the often vapid and pointless manifestos of various vague movements of disaffected affluent people... but either way, it's another costumed incursion of the corporate world into the turned-off sphere; pretending to be something it's not, pretending to be "street" and non-commercial when it's just, like everything else, trying to sell us another fucking product. Interestingly for all its fake edginess, it's not even a first.. by a margin of years. Nike did the same thing in 2001.

The final proof and roundup of what it actually is is found here: http://www.ricetek.net/?p=145
Hmm.. So it's another "zero sugar" thing.. thus presumably exposing Another Market Segment to the wonders of Aspartame, and putting paid to all the bullshit marketing junk that the "blog" comprises.

Why can't I drink something without increasing my risk of Brain Tumour?

Why can't I drink something without increasing my risk of Lymphoma?

Why can't a drink just be a drink and not contain a genotoxic compound that's there to make me think I'm ingesting already questionable refined sugar?

Why indeed.

Welcome to the 21st Century. Leave all thinking at the door and just wander round in a fucking daze like the agency responsible for this campaign expects you to.

As for me, I'll be the dude in the corner drinking beer. And maybe I'll put some Raw Sugar in it just to spite the fuckers; it'll probably taste shithouse, but I don't care.